Starmer’s team has ‘gone into the bunker’ since cabinet reshuffle, says Labour MP – UK politics live | Politics
Starmer’s operation has ‘gone into the bunker’ after cabinet reshuffle, says Labour MP
Backbench Labour MP Olivia Blake said it feels like Keir Starmer’s operation has “gone into the bunker”.
Discussing last week’s reshuffle, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It does feel like they’ve gone into the bunker, but they’ve actually thrown half the people out of the bunker at the moment, and we need to get back to a much more inclusive parliamentary Labour party (PLP), inclusive discussions happening with ministers and better representation around the cabinet table.
After a disastrous week in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, Labour MPs have begun to ask whether Starmer could be challenged as prime minister.
A number of MPs said a challenge was likely if local and Welsh elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing now protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.
Blake said last week’s reshuffle saw a “narrowing” of representation of different parts of the party in ministerial positions:
People just felt that it was such a large reshuffle and, you know, people who were actually delivering in their posts were moved. And it just kind of felt like there was a real narrowing in who was sat around the table, and that can’t be positive, because I think there’s a sense that the leadership don’t like to be challenged.
Asked about the No 10 operation, she said it was “really embarrassing” if Starmer was not told about Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein soon enough, amid suggestions Downing Street was aware of the messages before the prime minister defended the ex-ambassador on Wednesday.
Blake said:
We saw through the welfare reforms that they did the same again. They didn’t tell Keir, they didn’t tell the prime minister how bad it was on the back benches. So, you know, he was putting statements out saying, ‘oh, some people can sound off’.
Well, the strength of feeling in the PLP was much, much deeper than that. And again, I just think that whoever’s gatekeeping the information to the prime minister needs to stop. They need to be getting stuff to him much earlier.
She also said backbenchers are frustrated after a number of “own goals” for the government. Blake, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it is “frustrating” that the good work the government has done is “not cutting through” and added:
Instead, we’ve had a number of kind of own goals, and that has meant that we’ve slipped heavily in the polls, and that we seem to be more interested in focusing on each other rather than what’s in the best interest of the country at the moment.
More on this story in a moment. Here are some other key developments:
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The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
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Senior Labour MPs and the UK’s largest anti-fascist campaign group have called on Keir Starmer to mount a more heartfelt defence of diversity and anti-racism. They say they fear that Labour is not yet putting its “heart and soul” into the battle against Nigel Farage and the far right. Hope Not Hate’s chief executive has written a letter to Starmer in the lead up to a planned far-right demonstration in London on Saturday, demanding the prime minister speak up more against hate and racism.
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Lucy Powell has called for a “change of culture” inside Starmer’s Downing Street to make it more inclusive and better connected to MPs, promising that as Labour’s deputy leader she would when needed deliver difficult truths to the prime minister. Speaking to the Guardian after she secured 117 MP nominations in the battle to replace Angela Rayner, Powell said a sequence of what she called “unforced errors” by the government had left many Labour MPs and members frustrated.
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The bill to legalise assisted dying is a “licence to kill” that puts vulnerable people at risk, Theresa May has said, as the legislation was debated in the House of Lords for the first time. The former prime minister said she opposed the bill because she said people in England and Wales with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions could feel under pressure to end their lives, and “because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”.
Key events
Charlie Kirk killing invoked to bolster UK’s largest far-right rally in decades
Ben Quinn
The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, is among those listed to appear on stage at the rally in central London, which is expected to draw tens of thousands for an event that Robinson has been heavily attempting to monetise.
Other planned speakers on Saturday include Ant Middleton, a former UK special forces soldier who has increasingly used far-right rhetoric, as well as an MP for Germany’s far-right AfD party and a far-right Polish MEP.
Other Americans making the trip include Joey Mannarino, a self-styled US rightwing commentator who said: “All rape cases have just become fake to me” after a civil case alleging sexual assault by Trump.
However, there are doubts about whether one of the most high-profile speakers, the Canadian psychology professor and culture warrior Jordan Peterson, will appear.
While he is listed in the lineup and has been a supporter of Robinson online, he has made no mention of the event recently. His appearance would also pose questions about his continued association with the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a yearly gathering in London involving businesses and conservatives that has included the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK.
A pause on any new leave being booked has been imposed by police, who have had to contend with violence on the fringes of previous events involving Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
The rally is expected to attract upwards of 40,000 attenders, according to the anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate. A smaller gathering organised by the group Stand Up to Racism is also taking place.
The Stand Up to Racism march to a rally at Whitehall will be led by a Women Against the Far Right contingent including the MPs Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbott.
Pippa Crerar
There has been a joke going around Labour MPs over the past week about three envelopes in Soviet Russia. “Whenever you run into trouble, open them in order,” the instructions go. Envelope one says: “Blame your predecessor.” So he does – and it works. The party officials are satisfied. A year later, problems arise again. He opens envelope two. It says: “Restructure the organisation.”
He does a big reshuffle, changes some titles, and again buys himself some time. Finally, another crisis comes. He opens envelope three. It says: “Prepare three envelopes.”
The problem for Keir Starmer is that the MPs sharing the joke believe he has already opened his first two. It is becoming increasingly hard to find anybody in the Labour party who will argue that things are going anything other than disastrously for the government.
They fear that attempts to deal with the multiple difficulties faced by the prime minister over the past year – many of them self-inflicted errors such as the winter fuel duty decision, the freebies row and the handling of welfare cuts – have instead unleashed more chaos.
The most recent example of this is the sacking of Peter Mandelson. When ministers warned that his scandal-ridden history indicated he was more of a risk than an asset – even when the security services allegedly shared concerns – Starmer went ahead and appointed him.
Then, even though Mandelson had warned publicly that more “embarrassing” emails from him to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were about to be published, Starmer defended him at prime minister’s questions.
With his political judgment repeatedly questioned, Labour people turn to his “vision” for Britain. The problem is they can’t identify what the prime minister really believes in. Allies say he doesn’t like the “V word” and has made no secret of being a distinctly non-ideological politician.
Instead, he believes the government should demonstrate change by making a material difference to people’s lives, through schools, the NHS, the immigration system and the economy, even if that is in relatively slow, incremental steps.
“It’s hopeless,” one minister said. “Too many people feel the country is in decline and the only route back is big, radical solutions. We’re doing lots of good stuff but it barely gets noticed. It just doesn’t hit the mark.”
Starmer’s operation has ‘gone into the bunker’ after cabinet reshuffle, says Labour MP
Backbench Labour MP Olivia Blake said it feels like Keir Starmer’s operation has “gone into the bunker”.
Discussing last week’s reshuffle, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It does feel like they’ve gone into the bunker, but they’ve actually thrown half the people out of the bunker at the moment, and we need to get back to a much more inclusive parliamentary Labour party (PLP), inclusive discussions happening with ministers and better representation around the cabinet table.
After a disastrous week in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, Labour MPs have begun to ask whether Starmer could be challenged as prime minister.
A number of MPs said a challenge was likely if local and Welsh elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing now protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.
Blake said last week’s reshuffle saw a “narrowing” of representation of different parts of the party in ministerial positions:
People just felt that it was such a large reshuffle and, you know, people who were actually delivering in their posts were moved. And it just kind of felt like there was a real narrowing in who was sat around the table, and that can’t be positive, because I think there’s a sense that the leadership don’t like to be challenged.
Asked about the No 10 operation, she said it was “really embarrassing” if Starmer was not told about Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein soon enough, amid suggestions Downing Street was aware of the messages before the prime minister defended the ex-ambassador on Wednesday.
Blake said:
We saw through the welfare reforms that they did the same again. They didn’t tell Keir, they didn’t tell the prime minister how bad it was on the back benches. So, you know, he was putting statements out saying, ‘oh, some people can sound off’.
Well, the strength of feeling in the PLP was much, much deeper than that. And again, I just think that whoever’s gatekeeping the information to the prime minister needs to stop. They need to be getting stuff to him much earlier.
She also said backbenchers are frustrated after a number of “own goals” for the government. Blake, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it is “frustrating” that the good work the government has done is “not cutting through” and added:
Instead, we’ve had a number of kind of own goals, and that has meant that we’ve slipped heavily in the polls, and that we seem to be more interested in focusing on each other rather than what’s in the best interest of the country at the moment.
More on this story in a moment. Here are some other key developments:
-
The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
-
Senior Labour MPs and the UK’s largest anti-fascist campaign group have called on Keir Starmer to mount a more heartfelt defence of diversity and anti-racism. They say they fear that Labour is not yet putting its “heart and soul” into the battle against Nigel Farage and the far right. Hope Not Hate’s chief executive has written a letter to Starmer in the lead up to a planned far-right demonstration in London on Saturday, demanding the prime minister speak up more against hate and racism.
-
Lucy Powell has called for a “change of culture” inside Starmer’s Downing Street to make it more inclusive and better connected to MPs, promising that as Labour’s deputy leader she would when needed deliver difficult truths to the prime minister. Speaking to the Guardian after she secured 117 MP nominations in the battle to replace Angela Rayner, Powell said a sequence of what she called “unforced errors” by the government had left many Labour MPs and members frustrated.
-
The bill to legalise assisted dying is a “licence to kill” that puts vulnerable people at risk, Theresa May has said, as the legislation was debated in the House of Lords for the first time. The former prime minister said she opposed the bill because she said people in England and Wales with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions could feel under pressure to end their lives, and “because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”.
